IHardly anyone who has written about seventeenth- and eighteenth-century republicanism agrees as to exactly what the term means. Blair Worden has argued that republicanism was inconceivable in England before the execution of Charles I in 1649 and extremely rare even in the 165Os: the regicides, in this view, 'were concerned to remove a particular king, not kingship. They cut off King Charles' head and wondered what to do next. David Norbrook, in contrast, finds evidence of a flourishing 'republican literary culture' as early as the 162Os, and gives Marvell a prominent role in his account of post1650 English republicanism.2 Quentin Skinner, uneasy at the imprecision of the term, has moved from a liberal and inclusive definition of republicanism to rejecting the term altogether, substituting 'the neo-roman theory of free states', and in Liberty before Liberalism reserves the category 'republican' for those writers who reject monarchy altogether.'A copy of The Rehearsal Transpros'd in the Folger Library, discovered by Annabel Patterson, contains manuscript annotations by two seventeenthcentury readers: one comments 'it is supposed to be written, by Mr. Marvell, A Countrey Gentleman, & a Great Republican', while the other responds, 'To say he is a great Republican you are very much mistaken for he is of this parliament and a conformist'.4 By the strictest definition of the term, Marvell, if we take his words literally, would appear to disqualify himself from consideration as republican theorist. If a republican is a resolute, unyielding opponent of monarchy as an institution - someone who, as David Wootton has put it, applauded the execution of Charles I and regarded Brutus, Caesar's assassin, as a role model - then the author of the 'Horatian Ode' and Tom May's Death' is no republican.5 Even m An Account of the Growth of Popery (1677), which, as J. G. A. Pocock and others have shown, became something of a sacred text to later republicans, Marvell speaks respectfully of the institution of monarchy, and in particular of 'the Lawfull Government of England' as limited monarchy:Nothing is left to the Kings will, but all is subjected to his Authority . . . and a King of England, keeping to these measures, may without arrogance be said to remain the onely Intelligent Ruler over a Rational People ... So that the Kings of England are in nothing inferiour to other Princes, save in being more abridged from injuring their own subjects ... In short, there is nothing that comes nearer in Government to the Divine Perfection, then where the Monarch, as with us, injoys a capacity of doing all the good imaginable to mankind, under a disability to all that is evil.6Yet, as many commentators have noted, the strict definition of republicanism raises any number of problems, since many seventeenth-century writers who considered themselves republicans were willing under certain circumstances to countenance monarchy with limited powers, a constitutional arrangement which would guarantee that 'nothing is left to the Kings will'. David Wootton points out that 'there was an extensive public literature which appealed to republican principles and republican values, claiming that they were perfectly compatible with constitutional monarchy' (p. 4). The republicans Algernon Sidney, James Harrington, Sir Henry Vane, and Henry Neville all opposed the trial and execution of Charles I, as did John Lilburne and other Levellers.Edmund Ludlow, Sidney, and Vane were prominent among the radical republican opponents of the Cromwellian Protectorate, on the grounds that the new regime was monarchy under another name, a betrayal of the principles on which the English revolution had been fought. Some scholars have therefore limited the category of republicans in the 165Os to those who supported the Commonwealth government but, after 1653, refused to accept the legitimacy of the Protectorate. But, as Norbrook has shown, Marchamont Nedham, Milton, and Marvell all defend the Cromwellian government during this period by appealing to republican principles. …